I've spent a very long time reading today... It has been very productive, and I'm getting a second wind. I'm grateful for the second wind because I'm learning quite a bit--both about Turabian's material and about my scanner's benefits. Perhaps the difficulties I had with the reading Edge were a blessing in disguise. The OpticBook 3600 allows me to get a recognition that is very close not only to the original text but also to the original formatting. I had no idea this could be done with OCR. I thought that when the OCR was done, the formatting would be lost.

What all of this means is that I have been able to examine Turabian's examples and see where she has italics used, which also means that I should be able to note things like centering and font changes in samples elsewhere in the book. This is why the reaading has taken so long. Locating the text that is likely to be italicized or contain whatever changes I want to examine takes a few extra seconds. Examining the changes takes a few extra seconds. The extra seconds add up. But I am learning, and it probably takes no extra time than working with a human reader would take. To be honest, it probably takes less time because I don't need to figure out what I am looking for and explain it, wait for the person to figure it out and explain it to me, etc.

I'm glad that I am entering this experience with reasonably good writing skills. Much of the material on pp. 14-72 was familiar to me. I took some notes to clarify things that were not familiar or answer questions where I did not have correct information. These pages were much easier for me to read than the virst chapter on formatting. Formatting is a very confusing and frustrating topic for me. I believe it is because I can't imagine how I will accomplish it independently. I'm trying to remember that there is plenty of time for me to work on learning how to use Word for generating a manuscript.

There is a lot of information that I want to put into braille for a number of reasons. That takes more time... On one hand, I would like to skip this step and work with electronic text, notes, etc. However, this is a very dangerous thing to do. Computerized information is not always reliable. Also, I am a spatial learner. I need to see what I'm working with. My mind always returns to the semester when I spent hours and hours writing out answers by hand to the study guide that my history professor provided instead of simply listening to the books on tape. It was the first time in four years that I made the Dean's list. My GPA was a 3.25--and that's the kind of GPA I would need in order to get into Ph.D. programs. ... I can't afford to slack off and think that I will be ok using audio materials. Somehow, I need to make time to do this for myself.

It is raining, and there is thunder in the distance. Unfortunately, that may mean shutting down my equipment--and stopping my studying for the evening. If I could see, I could continue studying. Since I can't, perhaps I should sleep now and wake up after the storms blow over... I can't help wondering what Dr. B. will think reading this kind of reflection.. But it's my experience; and I do want to keep track of it in detail.